Democrats reacted with anger to Al Gore's defeat last night, with some senior officials barely able to conceal their bitterness at an election they claimed had been fixed.

"There was a campaign of voter suppression in Florida which has left very bitter feelings," a senior aide to President Bill Clinton said. "Gore won but he was robbed."

For the first time in half a century the Democrats now control neither the White House, the Senate, nor the House of Representatives. In exceptionally promising economic circumstances, the party has failed to place itself at the centre of American politics. The political prospects of Mr Gore himself are also now in question. For an incumbent vice-president to be ousted from the White House at a time of sustained economic prosperity, domestic tranquillity and international peace - and when the outgoing administration enjoyed record approval ratings - ought to be politically unforgiveable.

If this were November 8, the political obituary writers would say that Mr Gore threw it away and that his career as a major national politician must be over. But his prospects have changed. Last night's expected concession speech might even have been the opening shot of the 2004 Gore-Bush rematch.

Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat, said last night that it was "very hard to know" whether Mr Gore could try again in four years.

"That is several lifetimes in politics and that makes it hard to predict. There are lots of other capable people who, no doubt, will step forward."

But Mr Gore's achievements in defeat in the 2000 election cannot be lightly dismissed. He won more votes on November 7 than any Democratic presidential candidate in history - more than Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson. Only Ronald Reagan has ever won more support from Americans than Mr Gore did last month. And no candidate since 1888 has won more votes than his opponent and not moved into the White House.

For all the talk about bipartisanship under a Bush administration there will be no magnanimous job offer to Mr Gore - and he would not accept it anyway.

A Los Angeles radio station has offered Mr Gore a $200,000 a year contract to host a show but that seems even less likely.

Mr Gore may briefly think about relaunching his political career in the 2002 midterm elections. The governorship of his home state of Tennessee will be up for grabs in two years, as will Republican ex-film star Fred Thompson's Senate seat, which Mr Gore once held. But Mr Gore's loss in Tennessee on November 7 was a serious blow.

Unless he improbably drops out of politics altogether, a much likelier scenario is a period on the lucrative lecture circuit while he takes stock and maybe writes another book while fundraising for a presidential bid in 2004. He has the family farm in Tennessee to retreat to, but Mr Gore has not spent much of his life away from Washington.

The Democratic nomination for 2004 is not his for the taking. Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman must fancy their own chances, and it will not be long before the Democratic feminist machine begins to push a Hillary Clinton candidacy that could be irresistible. But Mr Gore controls the party for the moment and he can say with much conviction and some truth that he deserves a rematch. He remains a plausible candidate to take on and defeat Mr Bush next time.

Whether Mr Gore's closest advisers have the same determination is unclear. And there will be no shortage of Democratic critics who will argue - after a decent interval to let the dust settle and the wounds heal - that Mr Gore ran such a bad campaign in 2000 that it would be fatal for the party to tie itself to him a second time.

From the left, some critics will argue that the centrist legacy of eight years of Clinton-Gore drove vital supporters into the arms of the Green candidate, Ralph Nader. Mr Nader is the villain in many Democrats' eyes - his votes undoubtedly cost Mr Gore the election - and party pragmatists will want to get as many of those votes back as possible. They may reason that Mr Gore is hardly the candidate to achieve that goal.

From the right, critics will say that Mr Gore squandered the political legacy of 1992 and 1996 by pitching his appeal too low down the national salary scale. The Democratic leadership council, the organisation which has successfully promoted "third way" politics as the solution for the party since 1988, believes that Mr Gore identified himself too closely with the trade unions and voters dependent on benefits.